Friday, February 11, 2005

Lawyers Not Above the Law

The New York Times published an interesting story today on the conviction of a radical lawyer and two Muslim co-defendants for helping her imprisoned terrorist client smuggle messages to and from other terrorists. According to the report the lawyer, Lynne F. Stewart:

...was convicted on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of lying to the government when she pledged to obey federal rules that barred her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, from communicating with his followers. Her co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Mohamed Yousry, were also convicted of all the charges against them.

In a February 10 version of the story, the New York Times included the fact that Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General and supporter of extreme leftist causes, was also a member of the imprisoned terrorist's legal team along with Ms. Stewart. No surprise there.

Following her conviction, Ms. Stewart said:

I see myself as being a symbol of what people rail against when they say our civil liberties are eroded. I hope this will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country, that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do their jobs.Actually, it seems this case shows that you can lock up lawyers when they break the law, just like any other person. Too bad Ramsey Clark isn't going with her; he's long overdue.

3 Comments:

I wonder if Ms. Stewart's leftist convictions are so strong that she'd sacrifice her own life in a known terrorist attack to show the "evilness of the imperialist, capitalist US." Somehow I think not since the terrorists only wish death on those "little Eichmanns" on the island of Manhattan.

Actually Tom, in most instances its lawyers and judges (also lawyers) that lock up other lawyers. Among the professions, lawyers are the toughest in monitoring and policing their own; most, if not all, of the other professions still maintain the rule of omerte.

I am no defender of lawyers, but it seems to me that sterotyping lawyers in this context, is like saying Bush it just like Nixon, and Cheney just like Agnew, since they were all republicans, Hmmmm, now that I type that, you may be correct.